[WikiEN-l] Lies, damned lies, and statistics

[Charles Matthews]

Seth Finkelstein wrote:
> One reason I think projects such as _Citizendium_ are
> important is that they provide at least some practical
> counter-argument to the monopolistic tendencies of Wikipedia-hype.
> Which comes back to the original question about the success of
> _Citizendium_, and that being bound up in some very subtle decisions
> about Google's algorithm.
>
>   
Certainly CZ is potentially important: if it manages a "proof of 
concept" success for a somewhat different model of encyclopedia-wiki 
writing, then the whole debate moves on a notch.  And you could say the 
same thing about Google knols: these things are field-tests of ideas 
that differ in some significant ways from the WP model.  CZ ducked the 
issue of forking WP, which remains a major possibility that has not been 
tried. 

I'm not really following you, though, in that "counter-argument" I see 
(plenty enough of it in the archives of this list), and "practical" as 
in field-test I also see as just stated.  If you think of Sanger as 
producing a "practical counter-argument" over at Citizendium, then I 
guess you buy his whole side of the story.  In our (WP) terms we would 
wonder: is there not a CZ community that has a mind of its own?  Where 
are the Citizens in this discussion?  Do they see the Wales-Sanger 
foundation spat as something fundamental (as you seem to)? Or would they 
see it as something quite aside from the main reason CZ is there? In 
this light, if I may quote from Wikipedia article [[founder syndrome]]: 
"Without an effective decentralized decision making process there will 
be growing conflict between the newcomers, who want a say in how the 
organization develops and the founder who continues to dominate the 
decision making process." Interesting to ponder where this hits home harder.

I wouldn't know about the more subtle aspects of PageRank, and I suppose 
Google doesn't want me to. It might be coarse, of course.  We learned at 
Wikipedia to write as hypertext from early on (mav and summary style 
comes to mind).  We had many short articles instead of one big one one.  
Wikipedia is shrubland rather than a grove of sequoias.  I imagine this 
all matters.

Charles